Sizani Nqoba, principal of Indwe Secondary School in KwaNonqaba in Mossel Bay, Western Cape, cringed in embarrassment when the 2011 annual national assessments’ tests results were released. His grade eight and nine pupils had performed poorly, recording 4% in maths and 17% in languages. This meant a substantial number of the pupils could hardly count and read, let alone communicate through writing. “Surprisingly, our grade 12 pupils did us proud by scoring an 85% overall pass rate. However, the poor performance in grades eight and nine was a clear indication that things were not good at our general education band and this called for urgent intervention,” said Nqoba. Most of his pupils face serious learning barriers as a direct result of deep socioeconomic problems. According to Nqoba, the pupils most affected are those from the rural Eastern Cape.
<strong>Partnership with Nestlé</strong>
By coincidence, as Nqoba and his team were putting together a turn-around strategy, Nestlé South Africa was looking for a school it could adopt as part of its social responsibility obligation. According to Nestlé’s Ravi Pillay, the company decided to adopt schools in selected areas in which it had operations and Mossel Bay was one of them. He said Indwe was chosen on the basis of a careful and detailed field assessment, which had revealed the extent of the numeracy and literacy problems at the school.
<strong>Adopt-a-School campaign</strong>
The Nestlé initiative is a response to the Adopt-a-School campaign launched by key players such as Brand South Africa, the department of basic education and the National Economic Development and Labour Council. It aims to encourage businesses to adopt schools and donate educational facilities to them. Nestlé’s chairperson and managing director, Sullivan O’ Carroll, said the campaign was in line with the company’s business strategy and its partnership with communities was “… informed by the ideal that, for a business to be successful in the long term, it has to create value for communities where it operates”.
<strong>Base tests</strong>
Nestlé is paying for two tutors to provide after-school lessons in numeracy and literacy. Nqoba said he and the company decided to adopt a carefully targeted approach rather than a one-size-fits-all strategy. “We set basic tests to determine each pupil’s competence. Those who did badly were automatically included in the numeracy and literacy programme. Class teachers also validated the results. So far, we have identified 150 pupils who performed below par. Now that we have systems in place, I am confident we will do well in this year’s national assessments. In fact, our goal is to improve performance by 15%,” said Nqoba.
<strong>Numeracy and literacy</strong>
The two tutors are confident they can change the situation for the better and say there has been noticeable progress already. “We hope that with time things will improve substantially,” said Carol van Zijl, a former teacher and librarian who is now teaching literacy. In her experience, pupils battle with basic skills such as reading and writing. “I think the reason for this is because they have not been exposed to reading and writing early on in their lives,” said Van Zijl. Her approach is to go back to these basics.
Her maths counterpart, Katie Muller, said the main problem she had identified was the lack of practice. “To do well in maths one needs to practise it quite often,” said Muller. She also tries to persuade pupils to overcome the perception that maths is a difficult subject by incorporating fun activities during her lessons and also by reminding them of the job opportunities if they do well in maths. Having had more than 20 years’ experience as a specialist maths teacher, Muller is an authority on motivating pupils and helping schools to turn bad situations around. Both tutors are calling for more teaching time because, at the moment, they only spend one hour a week with the pupils.